This bronze portrait of Rudolph II is the last in a series of three that Adriaen de Vries produced at the Emperor's court workshop in Prague. Two signed busts of 1603 and 1607, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, preceded it.

The relief is signed under the left edge 'ADRIANVS FRIES·FEC:'; the sitter is identified by another inscription, 'RVD:II·ROM·IMP:CAES:AVG AET:SVAE:LVII·ANNO·1609' ('Rudolph II, Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, aged 57, in the year 1609'). The lion mask on the pauldron (the plate of armour covering the shoulders and upper arms), the supporting imperial eagle and the allegorical reliefs on the cuirass, depicting Hercules holding up the world and Minerva with a trophy of arms and a statue of Victory, allude to the Emperor's military and political power.

Adriaen de Vries was born in The Hague probably in about 1545, and like many of his fellow countrymen he went to Italy to gain experience. There he worked in Florence in the workshop of Giambologna and as court sculptor for Duke Carl Emmanuel I of Savoy in Turin. By the 1590s he was back north of the Alps, in Augsburg, Germany, where he executed the bronzes for the Mercury and Hercules fountains between 1597 and 1602. In 1601 he was appointed court sculptor to Rudolph II, before moving to Prague the following year.

This portrait was recorded in the inventory of Rudolph's Cabinet of Curiosities at Prague by 1611, but before 1652 it had entered the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden, having been confiscated - together with many other sculptures by de Vries - as war booty during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).